The regents made changes because of the anti-Israel protests and now, suddenly, everyone cares about free speech on campus.
MLive reports:
Faculty pushes to censure University of Michigan regents over speech, protest policiesFaculty representatives at the University of Michigan could formally censure the Board of Regents for the first time ever over changes to freedom of speech and protest rule changes.The Faculty Senate, the governing body that represents the university’s faculty, approved during its Nov. 4 meeting three motions for all faculty to consider over the next three days.The motions include a review of university bylaws, pausing rule changes addressing discipline of students and admonishing the regents for not involving faculty in changes to speech and protest rules.Faculty members have until 5 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 7 to approve the three motions via electronic voting. A separate motion criticizing the university’s handling of gender-based violence and sex discrimination was also approved for a faculty-wide vote.The censure motion, which faculty called the first of its kind against the regents in university history, was brought forward by School of Information professor Kentaro Toyama. He accused the regents of taking a “dramatic authoritarian turn” in the past year and not seeking community input on campus-wide rule changes.“This past year, the regents pretended to care about the opinion of those they oversee,” Toyama said. “Not students, not frontline staff and not faculty…they have repeatedly rebuffed faculty requests to meet with them, and they have undertaken a series of changes to university policy that are autocratic in nature.”The university respects the faculty’s voting process and will wait to see how the censure motion plays out, university spokesperson Kay Jarvis said. Any motion that passes would be advisory in nature, she said.
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